"Espanha. Espanha. Espanha!"

Qual era a prioridade?
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"-Espanha. Espanha. Espanha!"
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Ando a ler alguns capítulos de um livro de 2002, "Strategy is Destiny" de Robert Burgelman.
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O primeiro capítulo, como o mesmo título do livro, é muito interessante. O autor aborda um tema que me acompanha e preocupa durante as minhas intervenções nas empresas: Como conciliar o lógico, o racional, o planeado, o estudado, com as oportunidades em que uma empresa pode tropeçar?
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"Strategy is destiny is the theme of this book. Destiny is an archaic idea of a fixed and inevitable future. Strategy, in contrast, is a modern idea, of an open-ended future to be determined by it. In reality the two ideas exist in perpetual tension. Successful and unsuccessful strategies shape a company's destiny. But if strategy shapes destiny, destiny has ways of asserting itself and constraining strategy. New sources of strategy create the possibility of future destiny, and help the company evolve."
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"Each company is an ecology within which strategic initiatives emerge in patterned ways. Top management drives most initiatives but leaders througout the organization also drive initiatives. These initiatives compete for limited organizational resources to increase their relative importance."
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Depois o autor apresenta o que apelida de "Induced Strategic Action", o conjunto de acções que decorrem e executam a estratégia definida pela gestão de topo, algo a que na minha nomenclatura chamo de "somatório da aplicação das iniciativas estratégicas"
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Se um país fosse gerido por um governo como uma grande empresa, o Grande Planeador definiria o rumo e proclamaria "Espanha. Espanha. Espanha!" e toda a economia começaria, ou reforçaria a sua ligação a Espanha.
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Felizmente um país não é uma grande empresa e ainda vai havendo suficiente autonomia para diferentes actores porem em prática estratégias alternativas. Algo a que Burgelman, ao estudar a Intel, chamou de "Autonomous Strategic Action".
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"Autonomous strategic action involves initiatives of individuals or small groups that are outside the scope of the corporate strategy at the time that they come about."
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"The induced strategy process is variation reducing. The autonomous strategy process is variation increasing."
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Ainda bem que grande parte da economia não abraçou aquelas palavras "Espanha. Espanha. Espanha!" por que ou me engano muito ou Espanha vai ser um estouro ainda maior que o nosso.
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"Raising taxes in Spain is not a solution" de Edward Hugh ("Victor Mallet had a piece on public works minister José Blanco's Thursday speech in the FT yesterday. My feeling is that the Spain of Zapatero looks more and more like the Hungary of Gyurcsany with every passing day, and I say this more from the point of view of the twin deficit problem, and the impression the administration gives of things being totally out of control and no one knowing what to do, than anything else")
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"Are Spanish banks hiding their losses?" (referência ao estudo que ontem sublinhamos neste artigo do Expansión.com)
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BTW, just for fun (scary kind of fun) and to help open your eyes and raise your own awerness to what is written, payd by whom and with what purpose, enjoy this piece:
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"The analysis in our study suggests that although Iceland's economy does have some imbalances that will eventually be reversed, financial fragility is currently not a problem, and the likelihood of a financial meltdown is low" (Maio de 2006)

Reflexão espanhola

What a big wicked mess!

• "Las pymes solventes se quedan sin crédito mientras los grandes del ladrillo refinancian sin problemas"
• "Spain: The Hole In Europe’s Balance Sheet"
  

Para reflexão

"The Great Recession and the coming jobless recovery"

Para reflexão

"What does a double dip recession look like?"

Pouco agradável

Domingo à noite... descontraidamente surfando na net, de link em link, o resultado final é algo desconcertante:

Acerca da bolsa Robert Reich chama a atenção para a diferença entre os números e o que querem dizer os números, ou como se chegou aos números: "What's pushing the stock market upward? Mainly, unexpectedly positive second-quarter corporate profits. But those profits aren't being powered by consumers who have suddenly found themselves with a lot more money in their pockets. The profits are coming from dramatic cost-cutting -- including, most notably, payroll cuts. If a firm cuts its costs enough, it can show a profit even if its sales are still in the basement.

The problem here is twofold. First, such profits can't be maintained. There's a limit to how much can be cut without a business eventually disappearing -- becoming, in effect, a balance sheet in space.

Secondly, when businesses slash payrolls to show profits, consumers end up with even less money in their pockets to buy the things businesses produce. Even if they hold on to their jobs, they're likely to fear that they won't have the jobs for long, which causes them to retreat even further from the malls.

Most companies that have reported earnings so far have surpassed analyst's estimates, but that only means that earnings have been less bad than analysts had feared."

Qual é o maior cliente de Portugal? Qual a economia mais interligada com a nossa? Lembram-se?

Pois bem a situação em Espanha vai continuar a piorar: "Citigroup has just released a forecast which is very troubling in regards to employment and growth in the Spanish economy. With unemployment already having hit 17.9%, Citigroup expects layoffs to increase this to 22% in 2010."

Afinal não é só por cá que a alienação (no sentido marxista da palavra) dos governos acontece "This time as we pulled in we were behind a flat bed semi-truck loaded six feet high with more store shelving. These were hard shelves, gondolas, the type most people never notice in stores but I knew from my days in the auto parts business that these were expensive commodities, and this truck was loaded down with probably close to $100,000 worth about to be turned into $300 worth of scrap. These two examples are not the actions taken in a recession; these are the actions taken in a depression when business sees no future.

It is like we are living in two parallel universes, the people in one and the government in the other."

Cada vez mais parecida com a Grande Depressão. Cidades tenda na América!!!

Frutos de um Verão diferente

"Traditionally, Germans tended to book package holidays to Turkey, Spain or other warm climes. In the grip of the global economic crisis, however, many are looking to spend their vacations in their own backyard."

A retoma está quase a começar

Este artigo dá que pensar "Germany's Export Champions Slammed by Economy Crisis"
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"Orders have plunged by anywhere from 30 to 50 percent, in some cases even more. This, in turn, has created massive excess capacity. Temporary workers have long been let go, and fixed-term contracts have expired. Most of the remaining workers are now on state-supported short-time working schemes, where the government helps to make up their lost income.
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A company that has lost half of its business needs to grow by about 10 percent a year for at least seven years to return to former levels. More realistically, management should consider itself lucky if there is any growth at all in the near future. The direct consequences include mass layoffs, plant closures and bankruptcies."
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A retoma está mesmo quase a começar.
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E na Itália: "Isae Cuts Forecast, Says Italian Economy to Contract 5.3% in ’09"

Acordar as moscas que estão a dormir (parte XXXI)

Não sei qual é a resposta correcta, só posso especular uma hipótese.
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A pergunta é: o que nos separa da Irlanda? Se estamos com um colapso de 20% na recolha de impostos quando comparado com o ano anterior o que está a impedir o governo português de uma actuação à irlandesa?
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Exemplo de actuação irlandesa:
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"A further 17,000 state jobs must go (equal to 1.25m in the US), though unemployment is already 12pc and heading for 16pc next year.
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Education must be cut 8pc. Scores of rural schools must close, and 6,900 teachers must go. "The attacks outlined in this report would represent an education disaster and light a short fuse on a social timebomb", said the Teachers Union of Ireland.
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Nobody is spared. Social welfare payments must be cut 5pc, child benefit by 20pc. The Garda (police), already smarting from a 7pc pay cut, may have to buy their own uniforms. Hospital visits could cost £107 a day, etc, etc.
"Something has to give," said Professor Colm McCarthy, the report's author. "We're borrowing €400m (£345m) a week at a penalty interest.""
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Mais, por cá o governo até faz alterações à lei para aumentar as pensões apesar da deflação (-1%) implantada.
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A pergunta é: o que nos separa da Irlanda?
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Serão só as eleições de Setembro e Outubro?
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A justificação para esta actuação do governo irlandês reside nos €400m pedidos emprestados todas as semanas.
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Lembram-se das contas de Medina Carreira e Silva Lopes? Portugal tem um défice de 2 milhões de euros por hora. Uma semana tem 7 dias, um dia tem 24 horas... ora é só fazer as contas.
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Portugal pede emprestado por semana 2 x 24 x 7 = €336m por semana...
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Por que é que os irlandeses estão a agir como estão e nós por cá ... não passa nada?
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Trecho extraído de "For a glimpse of what awaits Britain, Europe, and America as budget deficits spiral to war-time levels, look at what is happening to the Irish welfare state."
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A pergunta é: o que nos separa da Irlanda?

"The imperative for the debt-bloated West is to cut spending systematically for year after year, off-setting the deflationary effect with monetary stimulus. This is the only mix that can save us."

Retoma no Batalha

No sítio do Público encontra-se “Roubini prevê fim da recessão norte-americana este ano” onde se pode ler:

“Roubini, professor de economia da Universidade de Nova Iorque e também presidente da centro de previsões económicas, RGE Global Monitor, reuniu-se ontem com investidores num evento organizado pelo governo chileno, no qual transmitiu uma perspectiva optimista sobre a economia dos Estados Unidos.”

No Naked Capitalism “However, Roubini issued a statement after markets closed repudiating the view that he had changed his view on the U.S. economy at all (see statement here).”

Roubini chama a atenção ““While the recession will be over by the end of the year the recovery will be weak given the debt overhang in the household sector, the financial system and the corporate sector. Now there is also a massive re-leveraging of the public sector with unsustainable fiscal deficits and public debt accumulation.”

O fim da queda dos indicadores não vai ser sinónimo de retoma… só fim da queda mais nada.

Acordar as moscas que estão a dormir (parte XXX)

O artigo de Daniel Amaral no Diário Económico de hoje toca na ferida "A dívida".
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Como macro-economista, propõe uma solução de curto-prazo que pode muito bem, se aplicada, transformar-se em mais uma adição para o nosso tecido empresarial, que todos os anos vai voltar a querer a boleia de um abaixamento de salários.
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Esta semana estive em várias PME's que até ao Natal têm de trabalhar todos os sábados, dado que estão soterradas de trabalho. E continuam a ganhar mais encomendas.
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Como macro-economista que se preza não profere nem uma palavra sobre o peso do cuco.
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"Como imaginam, nenhum partido vai falar disto no decorrer da campanha eleitoral. Mas um deles vai ter de formar governo. E aqui, uma de duas: ou não faz nada, e será um desastre económico, ou reduz mesmo os salários, e será um suicídio político. O mais provável é que não dure 6 meses.

Proponho uma via melhor: uma vez que o futuro governo vai sair do bloco PS/PSD, que tal estes partidos discutirem o problema entre si e definirem para ele uma solução conjunta?"

Ao que isto chegou!!!

"IMF warns pound could be at risk from uncertainty"

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"In a report published yesterday following a staff mission to Britain in May, the IMF said that a "credible plan" was needed to reverse the rapid deterioration of the public finances if confidence in the UK was to be upheld.

"Market conditions suggest the UK has been getting the benefit of the doubt, both in the Government bond market and also the foreign exchange market," said Ajai Chopra, the IMF's mission chief for the UK. "This benefit of the doubt is not going to last forever and it's going to be important that the Government does not test the limit of the market's confidence."

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E para nós, até quando dura a +rotecção do euro?

Acordar as moscas que estão a dormir (parte XXIX)

“The bourgeoisie worked primarily in order to invest, and it was not so much a standard of consumption as a standard of accumulation that the bourgeoisie struggled for and tried to defend against governments that took the short-run view. With the decline of the driving power supplied by the family motive, the businessman’s time horizon shrinks, roughly, to his life expectation. And he might now be less willing than he was to fulfill that function of earning, saving and investing even if he saw no reason to fear that the results would but swell his tax bills. He drifts into an anti-saving frame of mind and accepts with an increasing readiness anti-saving theories that are indicative of a short-run philosophy.”

Trecho retirado de "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy" de Joseph Schumpeter

Lembrei-me deste trecho ao ler "De onde virá o dinheiro?" no jornal i:

"Será através de dinheiro emprestado que se vai redinamizar a economia. Isto significa que o dinheiro que desapareceu (ou que existia apenas virtualmente) está a ser substituído por mais dinheiro emprestado - algum dele também virtual. "

O princípio do fim?

No Público de hoje "BCP falha empréstimo obrigacionista":
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"O Banco Comercial Português (BCP) falhou o objectivo de emitir, até ao final de Julho, um empréstimo obrigacionista de até 1,2 mil milhões de euros, conforme tinha anunciado. Esta operação destinava-se a reforçar os rácios de capital da instituição, dispensando, portanto, o recurso aos accionistas."
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No Jornal de Negócios "BCP falha testes de "stress" na Europa":
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"O Banco Comercial Português (BCP) é, actualmente, a instituição financeira nacional com o rácio de solvabilidade mais baixo, de 6,8%. E, num contexto de deterioração da economia e consequente aumento do incumprimento do crédito, este nível tornar-se-ia insuficiente para a viabilidade do banco, de acordo com o ESN."

Últimas!!!

"Economistas esperam ligeira revisão em baixa das previsões do Banco de Portugal"
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E como evoluirá a arrecadação de impostos em Junho?

Zimbabwéices

A propósito de "Contrafacções de notas de euro aumentaram 17 por cento"... mas então não é isto que andam a pedir ao BCE que faça? Mas então não é isto que o Banco de Inglaterra já está a fazer?

Que resposta para a recalibração?

Perspectivando:

• "When Will The Recovery Begin? Never." e sobretudo aquele trecho "The X marks a brand new track -- a new economy. What will it look like? Nobody knows. All we know is the current economy can't "recover" because it can't go back to where it was before the crash. So instead of asking when the recovery will start, we should be asking when and how the new economy will begin."
• "This is not a recession" e sobretudo ""Don't think of our current economic crisis as a recession. Instead, think of it as a recalibration.Everything is different now.If you think of it as a recession, you may be tempted to "hunker down" and wait for the economy to cycle back. If you think of it as a recalibration, you will be motivated to focus on what you have to do differently, since everything is different now. The way your business generates results is different, now. Your customers think differently, now. Your customers care about different things, now. Your customers act differently, now. Your customers may actually be different people, now. Customers aren't disposable anymore; more than ever, you have to create sustainable customer relationships. Everything is different now. I'm posting this on January 7, 2009. One thing I'm convinced of is that the world I am working in today is different from any world I have ever done business in. The world has been reset. We can no longer look at the "LY" column on reports to use last year as a benchmark for what will happen this year."
• "Acordar as moscas que estão a dormir (parte XXVII)" onde se fala da quebra de 20% na colecta de impostos em Portugal, quando se compara 2008 com 2009.

E se estamos mesmo num mundo novo (coisa em que acredito)?

O ecossistema que existia, assente não na energia solar mas nos ienes baratos e no endividamente compulsivo, colapsou.

Aconteceu o mesmo há 65 milhões de anos... pelos vistos um meteoro terá chocado com a terra algures na zona do actual Iucatão, as espécies mais poderosas, as espécies maiores, as espécies dominantes... incapazes de se adaptarem pereceram.

Como é que o nosso país se poderá adaptar a este cenário de recalibração com tantos direitos adquiridos?

Haverá possibilidade de actuar e adaptarmo-nos, ou teremos de esperar pelo ponto da singularidade, pela implosão real, para fazer o reset e avançar para um Portugal pós-Abril de 1974 2.0?

Edward Hugh escreve isto sobre Espanha no Facebook, e Espanha apesar de tudo parece estar em melhor situação que Portugal:

"But the real problem is with the level of indebtedness of the population, Spain is now as dependent on exports as Germany is, but currently runs a current account deficit of about 8 percent of GDP.

So Spain needs a crash course policy to jump start exports and investment in export industries. But this means a large change in prices, and this isn't going to happen, since no one even believes it is possible. So the economy will crash, like in an earthquake, maybe 12 to 18 months from now, when the government can no longer raise money. (E nós por cá, quanto mais meses teremos?)

Meantime Zapatero twiddles his thumbs. That is what I am angry about. The explosion when this economy finally blows will rock Spain, let's just hope it won't rock the whole eurozone with it.!"

Será que alguém vai falar disto durante a próxima campanha eleitoral?

When Will The Recovery Begin? Never.

"When Will The Recovery Begin? Never."
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"Problem is, consumers won't start spending until they have money in their pockets and feel reasonably secure. But they don't have the money, and it's hard to see where it will come from. They can't borrow. Their homes are worth a fraction of what they were before, so say goodbye to home equity loans and refinancings. One out of ten home owners is under water -- owing more on their homes than their homes are worth. Unemployment continues to rise, and number of hours at work continues to drop. Those who can are saving. Those who can't are hunkering down, as they must."
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"My prediction, then? Not a V, not a U. But an X. This economy can't get back on track because the track we were on for years -- featuring flat or declining median wages, mounting consumer debt (à atenção do Forum para a Competitividade e das suas teorias de redução administrativa de salários), and widening insecurity, not to mention increasing carbon in the atmosphere -- simply cannot be sustained.
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The X marks a brand new track -- a new economy. What will it look like? Nobody knows. All we know is the current economy can't "recover" because it can't go back to where it was before the crash. So instead of asking when the recovery will start, we should be asking when and how the new economy will begin."

A crise está mesmo quase a acabar

"Crise é "cruel" para Portugal pois incide sobre os seus pontos vulneráveis" (se calhar é por isso mesmo que são pontos vulneráveis).
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"“Estagnação pode ser mais longa do que esperávamos” (Durão Barroso sublinha a necessidade de “continuar com os planos de relançamento” das economias... com que dinheiro? O dele?)
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"Portugal deverá contrair mais do que 4,1%" (A crise está mesmo, mesmo, mesmo quase a acabar)
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Fia-te na Virgem e não corras!

Para quem acredita que a crise está quase a acabar e que a retoma vem já aí, aconselho a ler "Liquidity injections alone are not enough" de Wolfgang Münchau.
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Embora esteja em sintonia com o pensamento de Münchau, não tenho a certeza de que assim seja. Por isso, neste ambiente de incerteza quanto ao futuro desafio quem tem de tomar decisões a equacionar, também, um cenário Münchau.
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Se esse ambiente futuro hipotético se concretizar, quais serão as consequências?
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Como podem ser minimizadas?
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"The European Central Bank has recently pumped €442bn ($620bn, £380bn) in one-year liquidity into the system, but the money is not reaching the real economy. Japanese-style stagnation is no longer possible - it is already here. The only question is how long it will last. .
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Even in an optimistic scenario, global economic growth will be weighed down by a combination of credit squeeze, rising unemployment, rising bankruptcies, rising default rates, and balance sheet adjustment in the household and financial sectors.
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I would expect the US to have something approaching a genuine recovery at some point in the next decade, but probably not in 2010 or 2011. Judging by the co-ordination failure at the level of the European Union, the persistent failure to deal with the continent's 40 or so cross-border banks at European level, and in particular Germany's inability to sort out its toxic-asset contaminated Landesbanken, the economic prospects for the eurozone are infinitely worse."
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Por cá, discutem-se as grandes obras. Alguém discute a queda da receita dos impostos em 20%?
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Alguém discute como vão ser os juros que o governo português vai ter de pagar no futuro?
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Nas costas dos outros podemos ver as nossas, por exemplo a Espanha:
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"Spain's fiscal U-turn may not convince markets" onde se pode ler:
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"But one person with access to public accounts, who asked not to be named, told Reuters the public deficit could more than triple to 12 percent this year from 3.8 percent in 2008."
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"Spain has suffered the worst deterioration in public finances of any EU country, bar Ireland, after stimulus measures equal to 4.2 percent of gross domestic product in 2008 and 2009."
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"The government, which has long downplayed the seriousness of the recession, has begun to show signs of economic realism."

Nas costas dos outros...

"That is what happens to a country that has not only spent freely, but now finds itself far poorer than it had hoped. It is clear what this must mean: a sustained freeze on the pay bill; decentralised pay bargaining; employee contributions to public pensions; and a pruning of benefits. It is obvious, too, that this will mean massive and painful conflict between governments and public workers."
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Quem quiser saber o que é o "what happens" pode ler o parágrafo anterior aqui:
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"Tackling Britain’s fiscal debacle" de Martin Wolf